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Monday, October 31, 2011

Happy Halloween!!

Whew - I don't know about you, but I feel like we've lived Halloween a dozen times this year already, haha. We spent the weekend doing lots of fun Fall family things ... took another 700 pictures or so... and I'm beat with a capital B-E-A-T. Here's hoping that we still have energy for the main event tonight!

On Friday evening as the city of St. Louis was gearing up for game seven of the world series, we drove right on by Busch Stadium (where the atmosphere was ELECTRIC!) and went to Boo at the Zoo. I had never been to this festive event before, so I thought we should check it out. The idea was that if we were super impressed with it that we could make this something that our family looked forward to year after year...and I'm all about making new traditions.

So we dressed the girls in their costumes (a little preview for ya!) and began our adventure where the wild things are. Only...there were no wild things.

The zoo was decorated with lots of lights and little spooky Halloween vignettes. There were plenty of places for photo ops, only it was super dark so it's kind of hard to get good pictures there. :) I have to say, it was a little strange roaming the zoo after the sun had gone down - it definitely felt like a different place. But since it's one of my favorite places in the city I was pumped.

Here's Eric attempting to get a picture with the girls:

And Evelyn checking out the water. :)

I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting, but when we began noticing that there wasn't a single animal in a single exhibit I began to scratch my head a bit. I suppose it makes sense that after dark all of the critters need to be safe and sound inside, but it was a little odd to walk past big empty spaces where lions and bears should be. I felt really bad when Evie kept saying, "I wanna see the monkeys now..." :) So now I know... Boo at the Zoo is basically a walk-through of Halloween decorations. Got it.

It was getting pretty chilly and we hadn't eaten dinner yet, so we decided to grab some grub before getting too deep into the zoo. Check out this menu:

I thought it was cute. :) However, I did not think the prices were cute. I'll have more to say about that at the end. :/

We got our dinner and defrosted for a while inside. It was typical zoo fare, but we were starving so it felt like a five star dinner to me, haha. Things were going just peachy for a while, until I asked Eric to get a picture of Gracie and me together. You see, Evelyn had been trying to escape from her seat the entire time we were there, and as soon as she saw her daddy distracted for one second, a smile spread across her face and she ran. And I mean ran away.

Waiting patiently for dinner...

Not so patiently sitting to eat... :)

Sorry, I have a million pictures and I'm out of things to say. Imagine that. Haha.

And this is me trying to warn Eric to put the camera down and chase our escaping daughter, haha.

Once Eric got her back to her seat, she hit the chair in a funny way which knocked a spoon and a full container of strawberry applesauce out of my hands. (Don't ask.) Red sticky stuff went flying all over the floor, the table...ME...and I was over it.

We ventured back outside where it had gotten even colder, and we walked towards the night-lit carousel where lots of littles in costumes were enjoying a ride. I so wanted our family to take a spin around a few times but...here's where I turn into a bit of a scrooge about the whole thing. I think we are incredibly spoiled by having a normally free-admission zoo. So after paying $14 for our family to get in and another $30 or so for food...I wasn't about to shell out another twelve bucks just for a one minute ride. This was adding up to one very expensive evening for a family on a budget! I don't know...$60 just to walk around in the cold to look at some lights was starting to sound pretty ridiculous.

So we wheeled our stroller around and started heading for the exit. (It was sooo cold by now, and the girls' hands were freezing!)

We did have a good family evening, despite the cold and lack of zoo animals. But my overall assessment of Boo at the Zoo? This is an interesting event that might be worth checking out once with your family. It's not something that I would feel led to do year after year. Kind of a "once you've seen it, you've seen it" type of thing. Maybe we'll go back again when the girls are a little older. I'm sure if we ate dinner before we came and the temperature was much warmer we would've been able to enjoy it a bit more. So we'll give it another chance...in a couple of years. :)

Still, we are big fans of the zoo, and on a typical zoo day it would be totally worth the price. I guess one $60 event a year to support a wonderful place isn't such a bad thing. It's just hard to realize that when you're freezing your nubs off.

We listened to the world series game which had just started when we got back into the car...and we were driving by Busch Stadium right as Freese (I think) scored in the first inning. Awesome!! We got home in plenty of time to watch a good part of the game, so we sort of got the best of both worlds on Friday night. We were able to have a family night AND watch the Cardinals kick some behind. We knew that we needed to rest up, because we had a full weekend of bonfires and pumpkin picking and carving to do! I'll share the rest of our weekend later this week.

For now...we're going to busy ourselves by getting ready for going out and for welcoming trick-or- treaters this evening. It *should* be a good night, so I'm hoping everything goes as planned. If you're heading out later here are wishes for a safe evening and to stay warm! Luckily our girls have cozy costumes, and after Friday we invested in some mittens for our poor kids' hands. :) Tonight is a wonderful opportunity for community no matter where you live. I can't wait to venture out among friends and neighbors and have a good time. Maybe we'll see some of you around! Later gators.

We went to Boo at the Zoo last year to trick or treat on a Sunday afternoon and I was highly disappointed. I thought people would be dressed up in cute animal costumes, but no....we stood in line to get candy from businesses like mini van dealerships and such. =( Boo

Haha, I'm starting to feel bad that I'm turning everyone off...but that's they way it goes, I suppose. :) I think once our kids are all a little older and if the weather happens to be nice one of the evenings then it might be worth doing. It's better than sitting home and doing nothing, but I would definitely eat dinner before you go! That was a budget buster for sure....